Playing politics with the future
Authors: None The Lancet Planetary Health
Journal: The Lancet Planetary Health (2023)

Since the Climate Change act of 2008—the first legally binding climate mitigation commitment of any nation—The UK has been something of a climate policy leader. This is not to say that the UK is doing enough, but in a field of slow movers it has been a front runner. One of the reasons this has been possible is because, unlike in many other countries, addressing climate change has had cross-party political support. However, in a speech on 20th September UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a series of policy changes which weakened or delayed UK emissions reduction measures. This policy rollback occurred while other world leaders were attending the UN ‘climate ambition’ summit in New York. This sudden policy change is not only extremely short sighted, leaving yet more work to be shouldered in the future, but also endangers the UK's longstanding cross party-political consensus on climate change, while the conservative party consider what tactics may help them in the next general election. The substance of the policy changes were to generally reduces or delay mandates on electric cars, and electrification of building heating, as well as building insulation requirements and energy infrastructure, among other things. In his speech the Prime Minster emphasised these measures as an “honest” approach to reaching net-zero while removing unreasonably high costs from “hard-working British people”. However, there are a number of problems with this narrative. Firstly, delaying and watering down policies that were already, according to the Committee on Climate Change, at risk of failing to deliver on the government's 2050 target clearly makes that target still harder to achieve and important interim targets more difficult too. More fundamentally it is senseless to discuss the costs of climate policies without considering the costs of inaction and it is unfortunate that this kind of one-sided argument is still accepted and goes largely unchallenged in mainstream media coverage. Furthermore, while climate policies do have a cost, the way they are paid and who bears them is not inevitable, but the direct result of political choices and priorities. Even if we only considered current household costs, previous rounds of green policy cuts and delays have been estimated in a report form the Climate and Energy Intelligence Unit to have cost UK households up to £1750 on bills in 2022, compared with the savings that could have been made through green investments. To make the kinds of investments required to achieve net zero emissions the private sector requires a loud and consistent signal. Sudden policy changes like those announced by the Prime Minister reduce investor and developer confidence which increases the cost of capital and the overall cost of decarbonisation. These decisions undermine the UK's ability to capitalise on the opportunities of green jobs and industry. In short, these policies seriously damage the UK's ability to meet its legal decarbonisation commitments, risk increasing, rather than decreasing, household costs and send a damaging message about the UK's commitment to its climate obligations. Perhaps even more concerning, this move seems likely to be the start of an attempt to politicise climate policies which could, if the public can be sufficiently divided, further delay climate action in the UK. Currently the UK public remain broadly supportive of climate mitigation policies, even while living through a cost of living crisis. Whether that high level of support will make divisive politics less successful remains to be seen but this is certainly cause for concern and something those concerned about a healthy planetary future need to understand and guard against.